Adirondack Bench Seating Build (Part 1)

With the deck build finished.

Deck Build (Part 1)

Deck Build (Part 2)

Deck Build (Part 3)

I'm starting on a new project to furnished the deck with some seats and tables.  I originally wanted to build a L shape bench that wrapped around the fire pit.  But we both agreed that something more comfortable would be better if we were to sit on it for a long period of time.  So I used SketchUp and came up with this..

Adirondack bench seating with tables.

During the deck build, I ordered some extra 2 x 6 x 10 knowing I would need to build seating.  I cut those down into size and squared them into usable stock.

Squared stock.

I was very excited to use my table saw setup for the first time.  It was also my first time exercising the Incra Miter 5000.  I was very impressed with the precision on the angle setting and cutline is.  Best of all, just how easy it was to setup my initial cut and template that first cut for the rest.  No more drawing lines on every piece of wood!

First angle cut exceeded expectation.  Cut came in on my draw line perfectly.

20 degrees deep angle cut.  Cutting piece off for where the back frame sits on the deck.

Used the Incra Shop Stop to template every cut.

Angle cut against the long grain for the front beam board on the seat.

Glue and Screw

 I'm using the glue first and screw method for my jointing.  Using the screw to help set and also to seal to create a water barrier.  Then screwing it to get it the extra strength.

Lining up the wood for glue up.

Glued the first set.

Glued them all!

Testing the angle fit on the front beam.

Putting the front and back beams together to the side frame.

First bottom frame completed.

All 4 frames completed!

Dewalt 735x Review

I've bought this thickness planar new and had it for a few months now.  I like to keep my equipment and work area clean since I work in a garage connected to the house.  But one thing I can't keep clean is the cracks and holes inside the machine since it's either hard to reach or inaccessible.  I was pleasantly surprised when I opened up my planar to clear some chips that was stuck in the exhaust fan.

The blade cover.  The gasket kept all of the dust out.

The planar blade exposed, really not much dust.

Necessary Improvements To My Small Dust Collector

I own a small dust collector in my shop.  Specifically, the Grizzly G0710.  It's not the best, but it works for the most part.  I originally bought it not knowing what type of machines I was going to pair it up with.  Now that I have some bigger tools in the shop, my small and humble dust collector has become a major bottle neck during my fabrication process.

Most of the time when I'm cutting down hardwood, I don't experienced much issues.  But if I feed my cuts too fast, then the amount of debris from the machines I'm using would overwhelm the dust collector and the inlet hose starts backing up which causes the dust collector hose to clog up.

With softwood, I see this more often than not especially when I'm using my jointer.  Softwood tends to cut off in bigger chunks.  I've been working on Cedar recently and I had to clean out the hose every other cut which slows me down quite a bit.

So this is what I did to fix the issue.  I cut out the blade guard.  I'm not suggesting anyone else do this and yes, this does void the warranty.  By doing this, this fixes my issue with clogged hoses and also increases the CFM flow rate by quite a bit.

How to do this

I have both an angle cutter and a dremel.  For this, I used a dremel.  Attach the disk for metal cutting.  It should take about 2 mins to do all 4 connector points.  Also, I highly recommend you avoid using the dremel bits with the EZ-Lock attachments.  It's a really bad product because the bit breaks off the EZ-Lock connector piece which makes it not so easy to remove from the shaft.  I've had two break on me on first use.

Before

After

Putting Together An Incra Miter 5000

Every table saw user has a sled.  It's used for user safety and stability of the work piece being cut.  I was thinking of making my own, but ended up otherwise and opted for the Incra Miter 5000.  I went with Incra because I love their router table system.  Being blessed to have used such nice precision tools, I opted for it again.  

The installation of the Miter 5000 was very straight forward and the install guide was excellent.  The kit comes in the following pieces.

• Left sled
• Right sled
• Miter bar
• Miter gauge
• Fence and accessories

Here, I was dismounting the miter gauge from the left sled so I could install the miter bar beneath it.  The miter bar itself is very adjustable to multiple sizes of miter slots.  The default miter bar was set with a 1/32nd of an inch too narrow which meant half a turn clock wise in all the plastic spindles to tighten the bar up to the slot so it did not wiggle, but still allowed for movement.

Left side with the fine micro adjuster installed

 To get both the left and right sleds to fit your table, a cut is necessary on both left and right side.  With the left sled fitted on the miter bar and into the miter slot and right sled installed as a single unit, I made the cut and also tried out the saw for the first time.

Just make sure the saw blade is at a 90 degrees using a machinist angle.

Before the cut

After the cut.

 The right side sled also needs the same operation done to it.  Mount the aluminum miter bar onto the right sled.  Use the miter bar installation holes that would just let you cut the left side of the board.  For my setup, it turned out to be the middle set of holes.

Both boards cut and left sled installed back into the miter slot.  The kerf line sits between both the left and right sled.

 The Incra miter gauge is very awesome.  It allows for adjustments for half a degree.  Adjustments are segmented into 5th's on the major gauage, single digits on the left micro adjuster, and half a degree on the right micro adjuster.  Very easy to use and sight in.  As it is from the factory, I did not need to make any post adjustments.

Incra miter gauge and micro adjusters.

Incra Miter 500 installed on a Grizzly G0691 table saw

Setting Up A Grizzly G0691 Table Saw

I've been looking around for a table saw since my first time squaring stock without one.  After some patient waiting, Grizzly finally started their summer sale and i hopped right on it wagon.  I ordered the G0691 for the following reasons

• 3 HP Leeson motor
• 82" combined work area.
• Same fence system used on the Laguna table saw
• Compatible with the Shop Fox mobile base
• Comes with both blade guard and riving knife.

Shipping and Packaging

Grizzly shipped the product extremely quick from their Springfield warehouse.  UPS Freight was the carrier.  During shipping, there was some sort of unspecified incident.  After a weeks wait, my boxes arrived!  The UPS delivery crew were nice enough to help me push the boxes up to my garage which is a feat considering we had to push a 400 lb box up a 15 percent incline.

I got to inspecting the packages and noticed damage to one of the box.  But luckily, none of the contents in side was harmed.

The long box the side rails were contained in.  Box was damage during transit.

The saw came in 3 separate packages.

• Cabinet saw / cast iron tables / blade and accessories
• Side rails
• Fence

The cabinet saw has two bolts on the underside that is mounted to the pallet.  So be sure to undo them before trying to lift it off the pallet.  They are on opposite corners.

Cabinet saw with cast iron table.  It came on a pallet.

Fence

Assembly

My wife and I managed to lift the cabinet saw off the pallet and onto the mobile base.  The film on top is a sheet of wax paper with machine oil coating it to protect from rust.

Cabinet Saw

The wax paper was removed and the machine oil was cleaned off using some Pedro's Lime Cleaner.  After cleaning, I used some Johnson Paste wax and covered the surface to prevent rusting.  I like it because it's not greasy like WD40 and it doesn't react with wood such as leaving a stain.

The cabinet saw comes with cast iron wings needing to be attached using 3 hex screws per side.  The cast iron wings are about 60 lbs each if I had to guess.  Since I was installing this alone, I used my Rockwell stands to help assist the placement while I tightened the nuts.  I didn't tighten the screws initially, just enough to bear the weight of the wings.  Afterwards, I used some jointed lumber and clamped them against the cast iron table on the main cabinet first using two clamps, then followed up with clamping the wings.  This was done to ensure the wings were flush flat with the surface of the table.  I got lucky and did not have to shim the space between the wings and the main table surface.  Both sides were installed this way.

Also make sure the wings are equally flushed on both the front and rear edge.

Jointed lumber used to ensure flat surface assembly.

Right side installed completely.  Left side with wing loosely installed.

Both wings installed.

The railing for the fence was also installed with the help of the Rockwell stands.  I love these stands because they have micro height adjustments.  I positioned one stand all the way to the left of the rail and the other one to the right of the rail after I had loosely installed the bolts on the rail on to the cast iron table.

The hardest part installing the rail was making sure that it sat just 3/16 inch below the table top.  Make sure when you tighten the bolt, you tighten from the back side where your nut or bolt is not touching the railing.  This will give you a better chance of none movement of the rails after your final position check.

Position of Rockler stands to help with the install.

After bolts being tightened, alignment check for 3/16 inch below table height.

Another shot of the stand holding the railing.

For the install of the extension table, I once again used the stands set to an arbitrary height.  Once i dropped the table panel in, I did the a preliminary height adjustment to get the bolt holes lined up.  Once those were lined up and bolts/nuts were loosely tightened, I followed up with a final height adjustment to get the table top flush with the cast iron wing.  After thing were flush, the bolts were cranked down.

Position of my stands for the table panel placement.

 Aligning the table panel with the cast iron wing.  I did not use the jointed wood method as before since precision this far back from the blade is not necessary.  But I did use a jointed wood and slid over the crack multiple times to make sure it would not catch in either direction.

Used my long level to give me a rough gauge of being flush

Table top installed and fitted to the mobile extension

The fence install was pretty difficult.  It did not come from the factory with preset alignments.  After I plopped the fence on to the rails, the rail was way off with the outer portion of the fence pointing to the left side of the table by 3/32 width for the run of the table.  Took me a while to get the hang of table adjustment. Basically, for fence adjustment, to pull the fence back straight from a left bias, you need to loosen the right peg on the outer face and tighten the right peg on the inner face of the rails.  You should do it in that order.  The first action gives you a picture of adjustment, and then the second action forces the alignment and also the tightness of the slide of the fence on the rails.

Fence unboxed

Fence post alignment and pulled all the way to the edge of the blade.

Sighting the marker on the ruler.

Installing the riving blade was fun since Grizzly didn't provide enough instructions on it.  The riving blades fits in between these two metal clamps.  The fit is pretty snug from the factory so you might need to adjust the middle hex screw if you were standing from behind the table on the left side of the blade.  A half twist counter or clockwise is enough for this adjustment.  On the right, there is a spring loaded elbow ping that you use for the locking and unlocking for the riving blade or blade guard.

To install the riving blade, pull the elbow to the right and towards you to have it held in unlocked position.  Push the riving blades between the two clamps.  Then push the elbow pin away and let it retract into the riving blade assembly.

Just do the oppose for uninstalling.

Riving blade holding assembly. 

Closeup shot of the spring loaded elbow pin.

Blade guard installed.

With everything done and cleaned off.

Mobile Base

It took me a while to gather this information.  So this might benefit some one out there looking for the same topic.  The mobile base is a Shop Fox D2057A and D2259A extension kit.  You really want to get them together because when you are putting D2057A together, one side of the base consist of a bar from the extension kit.  If you wanted to upgrade later, it would be a nightmare because you would need to lift the cabinet out of the mobile base before you can begin with the upgrade.

Installing the Incra Cleansweep Dust Collector

First off, I apologize for all the grainy and dark photos.  I was working pretty late in the shop and didn't have much light to work with.

Having done quite a lot of routing lately, it gets pretty dusty without proper dust collecting equipment.  Luckily, Incra makes this box that fix under your router table enclosing the router plate and what ever dust and wood chips get spun out from underneath the table.  I really thought that installing this was going to be slam dunk 15 minute thing.  But of course.. NOT.

So this thing was not designed with installation in mind for people who have built a 3 sided enclosure with their router table.  I'm going to talk about the steps I went thought to get this thing properly installed so you don't have to hack it.

Incra Cleansweep DustCollector

Below is a picture of the assembled enclosure.  It's the first step in the instructions.  The next step is mounting it under the table.  Don't try to mount this upside down.  It's not going to work.  There are just too many screws and bad angles if you don't have clear line of sight or obstructions in the way.  I tried and waste a good 15 minutes on it.  Ended up dismounting the router lift and table fence, then detaching the table from the table frame and flipping the table over.  Doing all that really only took 10 minutes.  Go figure...  When mounting the enclosure on to your table, make sure to drill pilot screws first.  The wood screws that come with are not self drilling.

Enclosure assembled and screw mounted to the under side of the table.

Modification to Table

Several modification was necessary to accommodate the enclosure.  I had a shelf in the mid-section of the void in the frame of my table.  I had to lower the shelf about 4 inches.  You need to lower it enough so that the slider for the 4 inch dust collection port door has room to move in and out.  The shelf support on the table side walls had to move down 4 inches and I had to slide the shelf support board to allow for the dust port hole to nest through.

In the picture below, you will also see the two holes in the back panel of the table.  These holes allows me future access to fiddle with the enclosure's back panel screws if I ever needed to partially unscrew them to jar the door open to feed the router wire through or replace the router all together.  I think this is essential that the holes are added if you a back panel to your table like mine.

Modifications to inside of the table.  Note back panel and support shelf.

 The shelf was also shortened to a length not to hit the dust port of the enclosure.

Shortened shelf.

 Wiring

With the table top upside down and enclosure mounted to the table still, I threaded the router cord through the back of the case with the grommet attached.  Note that you need to be inventive with how you do this because eventually, you'll need to flip the table back over top side up without stepping over or dragging your router motor unnecessarily over the floor.  Luckily, my Bosch router comes with long cord and this step proved to be easy.

Also note that is is not necessary to attach the grommet into the hole in the back panel, but you should try as an exercise of how it works and familiarizing on how to install blindly.  The instruction tells you a clamp is necessary to squeeze the grommet into the hole, but I found it totally unnecessary unless you have fatter than normal cables.

Router power cord routed through back of enclosure door.

Router sitting on the ground with router cord routed between the table frame and table and into the router lift hole and out of the enclosure.

The router still on the ground with the attached cable going into the router lift hole as an end result of table being flipped over to the upright position.

 Installed

Now with everything installed, this is how it should look.

Installation with no router in it.

Installation with router in it.

  More Things To Note

For the front panel, there are these cylindrical nuts which are installed to the upper most corners of the panel.  Do not tighten them down all the way in the beginning.  If you do, they will need to be loosened and tightened after the front door is installed into the enclosure.  These nuts act as sliding clamps for the up/down motion of the door.  And you tighten them down to fit the thickness of the enclosure edge that acts as a railing for these nuts.

Small cylindrical nut for front door.

If you have a shelf, make sure you also cut a section out to accommodate for the up/down sliding action of the front door.  If not, you'll need to bend the bottom of the door out to open which may or may not bother you.  I ended up accepting the fact that I will need to bend the door since I did not want to take everything out to make the cut for this little inconvenience.

View of front door colliding with the shelf.